HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Army is seeking new kit to directly “engage” adversary satellites from the ground, particularly if and when sensing sats are used to target US forces, according to a senior Army space official.
While it may sound unusual for the land force to be involved in counter-space operations, Col. Joe Mroszczyk said it was part of the service’s expanding role in helping US Space Command (SPACECOM) achieve space superiority.
“It’s not foreign for the Army to shoot a ship at sea. Why should it be any different for the army to engage a satellite in space? It’s the same construct, and it’s a matter of our core competencies to maneuver on the land to be able to deliver effects across all domains,” Mroszczyk, director of Army Space and Missile Defense Command’s Transformation Integration Directorate – Space Superiority (TID-SS), told Breaking Defense in a wide-ranging interview on the margins of the annual Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMD) Symposium here.
Mroszcyck would not specify exactly what the Army would use to target satellites. However, he stressed that the Army would follow US national space policy that eschews the use of destructive kinetic anti-satellite attacks that would create long-lived space debris.
